Friday, January 30, 2015

Before I discuss Librarians, it seems like a good place to
discuss the Sanguinary Discipline.

The Primaris power is Quickening,
which gives the psyker or a character within 12” Fleet and +D3 Initiative and Attacks. I don’t see this being used
on Librarians too often, though Librarian Dreadnoughts and Mephiston can make
great use of it. This will be tremendously useful as it turns your nastiest
character into a verifiable monster.

Fear of the Darkness forces
an enemy unit within 12” to make a Morale check with a -2 modifier. I like this
power for pushing back important enemy units, which will help prevent enemy
counter-assaults and push squads off objectives. If you are aggressive enough,
you can keep your opponent in their deployment zone and force units to fall
back off the table.

Unleash Rage gives
a unit within 18” Rage. If it already
has Rage, it gets +1 Attack. There’s
nothing bad about this power.

Monday, January 26, 2015

The Captain is generally not a popular choice. He lacks any
unique abilities that benefit the army, instead relying on assault killing
power to earn his points. In Codex: Space Marines, he is outdone by the Chapter
Master for a fairly small cost in points. For the Blood Angels, this isn’t
really a problem as Dante, while better in combat, is very expensive compared
to a similarly equipped Captain and doesn’t fill your mandatory HQ slot.

The Captain has fairly standard options, but there are a few
unique Blood Angels items that make him stand out. The most important is Valour’s Edge. While a Space Marine
Captain has to take an unwieldy weapon to get AP2 (or pay for the very
expensive Burning Blade), Valour’s Edge allows a Blood Angel
Captain to cut through the best armor in the game without slowing down for only
a few more points than a standard power sword. Its lack of a strength bonus is
compensated for by Furious Charge. I
also like to arm him with an inferno pistol, which allows him to take an extra
wound off tough targets as he charges and to threaten vehicles. I prefer a
pistol over a storm shield because the pistol gives you an extra attack with Valour’s Edge. Beyond that, artificer
armor is pretty much a given, as well as some way to get him to assault. The
jump pack is the fluffiest option, but the bike is once again probably
superior.

Friday, January 23, 2015

Before I get into the individual units, I wanted to cover the Blood Angels Warlord Table and Relics. These have a great amount of bearing on the HQ choices. In general, the Blood Angels follow the trend of 7th Edition. The Warlord traits range from situational to awesome, while the Relics provide some extra flexibility to a few important characters.

Monday, January 19, 2015

The Blood Angels are back with a new Codex, in line with the
rest of the 7th Edition books. Though you might not know it from the
content of this blog over the last year, Blood Angels were my first 40K army,
started with the release of 3rd Edition back in 1998. They’re by far
my largest army, and the one to which I’m most attached. They’re not as well
painted as my Executioners or Eldar because I painted many of them early in my
painting career, though I plan to add quite a few new units to them over the
next couple months.

Overall, this book feels very similar to the 3rd
Edition Blood Angels that I started off playing. The biggest reason for this is
that all Blood Angels now have Furious
Charge, which is essentially the new Blood Angels Chapter Tactic. This is
great; I’ve never been a fan of having to unlock Furious Charge for specific units. It just seems like something
that every Blood Angel should have.

Saturday, January 17, 2015

There's a Conan Boardgame blowing up Kickstarter at the moment, and I felt like I should write a quick announcement given my interest in all things Robert E Howard. The game looks a lot like an updated, faster-paced Hero's Quest, and comes with almost 80 great looking models. From what I can see, it looks like a blast to play. It also is completely based on the original Conan stories, and includes an amazing variety of characters from the source material.

The game funded 6 minutes after it went live, and and has unlocked a ton of stretch goals so far (most of them being new models). It is definitely worth checking out if you're a fan of Conan or if you just like Sword and Sorcery boardgames.

Friday, January 9, 2015

I'm sure some of you have noticed that I haven't been posting as often as usual. The holidays are part of it, but I'm also getting prepared to move for a semester. I'll be teaching my own university class, and getting ready has been taking up a bunch of my time. Once I've moved and gotten a few lectures done, I should have more time to post.

I played a tournament with my Eldar to cap off my time with them, and I'll get that report up as soon as I'm able. After that, I'll be concentrating on my Blood Angels. I have a battle report of my first game with the new Blood Angels that I'll be writing up, as well as starting my unit reviews for the new codex. As far as painting goes, I've got quite a list of models to work on, as I picked up one of the new Tactical squads and the Deathstorm box, and I've still got a few things left over from when 6th Edition broke my heart.